If the House impeachment managers had gone forward with their last-minute idea of calling witnesses at Trump’s Senate “trial,” Trump’s attorneys were apparently ready with a list of their own to call.

It’s a relief that this folly wrapped up over the weekend. But at the same time, those witnesses might have shed some light on events surrounding the Capitol breach on January 6. Of course, that’s why the Democrats let the process mercifully end. They couldn’t vote to have witnesses of their own without allowing Trump’s defense to call them, too — though I’m sure they tried their darnedest to figure out how that might be possible. And Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, talking with Maria Bartiromo Sunday on Fox News, said the defense actually would have called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“We would have called Speaker Pelosi,” he said, “because ultimately, she’s the person in charge of Capitol Hill … everything around Capitol Hill.”

He mentioned others as well, including Steven Sund, the former head of the Capitol Hill police who resigned after the incident, under pressure from Pelosi as reported in USA Today. As Jordan said, Sund had specifically asked her for the National Guard to be present beforehand.

Jordan commented that the Democrats pulled back from allowing witnesses to be called because they didn’t want to get into some “uncomfortable facts.” I’ll say.

Trump Lawyer Rips Democrats and Media Over Doctored Evidence

It might have been delicious fun to see a world-class attorney such as Michael T. van der Veen question Speaker Pelosi on the floor of the Senate. After Trump’s acquittal, a reporter from CBS News, Lana Zak, asked van der Veen about what he had described as “doctored evidence” that was presented by Democrat House managers during the Senate trial (or as we say here, “trial”). This included the photoshopped addition of a Twitter “blue check” and deceptively edited footage of Trump speaking and crowd unrest.

He suggested that she had worded her question in a way that downplayed the doctored evidence. “It’s not okay to doctor ‘a little bit’ of evidence,” he told her.

“Prosecutors in this case doctored evidence,” he said. “They did not investigate this case, and when they had to come to court of the Senate to put their case on, because they had not done any investigation, they doctored evidence. It was absolutely shocking. I think when we discovered it and were able to expose it and put it out, I think it turned a lot of senators.”

When it comes to the video they showed on the Senate floor, we’ve certainly called it as we see it and have no problem calling it falsified evidence. Most pointedly, we refer to the managers’ choice to edit Trump’s words to leave out “peacefully and patriotically” as the crowd was getting ready to walk to the Capitol.

Doctor evidence in an actual trial, even a ‘bit’ of it, and you’re in big trouble, likely to be disbarred.

Van der Veen didn’t hold back, either, accusing the media of “trying to divide this country” at a time when the country needs more than anything else to come together. “The media want to tell their narrative,” he said, “rather than just telling it like it is,” adding that corporate media outlets have to “start telling the right story in this country.” But divisive reporting means profits.

“You are bloodthirsty for ratings,” he said. “You’re asking questions that are already set up with a fact-pattern.”

“When I watch the news, I watch one station, and it is raining. And I watch another station at the same time, and it is sunny. Your coverage is so slanted, it’s got to stop,” he told Zak, speaking of the media in general. It has “no integrity at all.” Read more about his interview with Zak at The Epoch Times.

The Constitution Cancel Culture

Another Trump attorney, David Schoen, has a similar way with words. Last Friday, he coined a phrase for Trump’s impeachment “trial” — he called it “Constitutional cancel culture.”

What the Democrats are doing, he said, is using impeachment as a tool to disqualify their political opponents. He warned that this sets a dangerous precedent.

“This would transform the solemn impeachment process into a mechanism for asserting Congressional control over which private citizens are and are not allowed to run for President,” he told the senators during the first hour of Friday’s presentation. In short, this unprecedented effort is not about Democrats opposing political violence. It is about Democrats trying to disqualify their political opposition. It is Constitutional cancel culture.”

What a great way to put it. Recall that old expression about the justice system: “You can indict a ham sandwich”? The way we’re going, impeachment will end up being like that. If the opposing party has control of the House, they’ll find something — anything — to impeach the President for. The idea: to intimidate strong candidates on the other side, especially political outsiders like Trump — from ever running at all.

Shoen’s point about violence is valid as well. We ought to know by now that the Democrats don’t oppose political violence when it suits their purposes. Sometimes they even vocally support it, as a number of them did during last year’s “summer of love,” when Kamala Harris was helping raise money to bail out protesters who had been arrested.

A CIA Officer Ditches the Dems

Finally — and perhaps most impressively of all — a former CIA officer has spoken out as well, saying that he’s left the Democratic Party after this second impeachment of President Trump because of the divisiveness of it.

Bryan Dean Wright wrote in the Daily Caller that “For years, Democrats like me have watched with increasing alarm as our own political leaders and activists…have used an endless stream of hateful, violent, and ultimately un-American rhetoric that has resulted in billions of dollars of economic damage and given birth to a violent national movement.”

As reported in The Epoch Times, Wright said the “modern left” is infused with “systemic hatred” that has “inflamed profound political divisions and the predictable outcomes that come with them, most especially violence and destruction.”

As if to echo Shoen’s point about Democrats and violence, Wright went on at length about the violence encouraged by the left, not just by elected officials but by the media, citing specific examples.

“For Democrats like me,” he wrote, we have no choice: we have to leave. But where do we go, politically, now that our party can no longer be salvaged? The answer is to be found in the exit data from the 2020 election: We’re already leaving, it turns out, and joining the new, populist Republican Party.”

Didn’t I tell you there are reasons to be hopeful?

Mike Huckabee is the former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times best-selling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN.

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.